I do applaud your optimism. Wish I could have that same rosy view. Unfortunately company executives have shown time and again their true motives. You are of course correct that they are not robots; however, studies do show that they are disproportionately psychopathic compared to the general population, and the behavior of companies often reflects that quite visibly. Profits and the interests of stakeholders always take priority over basic human decency. It would definitely be refreshing if that is not the case here.
Not trying to get personal or anything, but it sounds like you’ve never been an employee in this kind of organization. It is absolutely the higher-ups (line managers; not necessarily the CEO) who decide whether a train conductor is allowed to delay a train for reasons like this. Employees such as these are under constant stress and pressure to perform to expectations or risk negative evaluations, which can lead to the next raise being denied or, in some cases, dismissal. In many organizations with schedules, timetables, deadlines etc., employee evaluations often depend on coldly calculated heuristics such as proportion of on-time arrivals, not on a human evaluation like how nice you are to animals. Your delayed train just drops you in the statistics and “there was a cat on the roof” simply does not factor into those statistics. This is a direct consequence of the profit motive where “productivity” or “employee performance” is considered more important than peripheral considerations like animal well-being.
I do applaud your optimism. Wish I could have that same rosy view. Unfortunately company executives have shown time and again their true motives. You are of course correct that they are not robots; however, studies do show that they are disproportionately psychopathic compared to the general population, and the behavior of companies often reflects that quite visibly. Profits and the interests of stakeholders always take priority over basic human decency. It would definitely be refreshing if that is not the case here.
You’re missing a fundamental part here. The company execs are not the ones deciding whether to delay a train with a cat on the roof.
That’s the driver and conductor, who are paid hourly or salaried. The execs don’t even know there is a cat on the roof.
Not trying to get personal or anything, but it sounds like you’ve never been an employee in this kind of organization. It is absolutely the higher-ups (line managers; not necessarily the CEO) who decide whether a train conductor is allowed to delay a train for reasons like this. Employees such as these are under constant stress and pressure to perform to expectations or risk negative evaluations, which can lead to the next raise being denied or, in some cases, dismissal. In many organizations with schedules, timetables, deadlines etc., employee evaluations often depend on coldly calculated heuristics such as proportion of on-time arrivals, not on a human evaluation like how nice you are to animals. Your delayed train just drops you in the statistics and “there was a cat on the roof” simply does not factor into those statistics. This is a direct consequence of the profit motive where “productivity” or “employee performance” is considered more important than peripheral considerations like animal well-being.